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As a Sword of Damocles suddenly hangs over Lewis Hamilton’s world championship challenge, with the possibility that a stewards’ enquiry will dock him 10 grid places in the wake of the Japanese Grand Prix safety-car incident, Fernando Alonso is quietly waiting to see how his own aspirations pan out now that he is 12 points adrift of his McLaren team mate with only two races and 20 points left.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Spaniard agreed with the criticism of Hamilton’s tactics from Red Bull’s Mark Webber and Toro Rosso’s Sebastian Vettel, who crashed into the Australian.
“It’s difficult to know what the car in front of you needs to do but for sure, I didn’t see the race on TV but hearing the comments of them, they seem to overtake the car in front a couple of times and some unnecessary manoeuvres, to overtake and to avoid cars in front of you,” he said. “I also overtook Lewis two or three times, so it seems that we all agree.”
Although Alonso recently described his second place here in 2006 as “a frustrating race”, when he was beaten by Michael Schumacher as the Ferrari driver scored his 91st and final victory, he said yesterday that he likes Shanghai International Circuit.
“It was not frustrating last year, first of all. My feelings are a little bit up and down because now, at the moment, in the championship it’s good to come here. I like this circuit and I won once and I finished second last year, so I always have great memories from this track and good times. But being 12 points behind in the championship with two races to go is not the perfect position, so as Kimi said, I think we still have a little chance in the championship but it’s not up to us any more, we need some other combination of results, so we just need to concentrate on winning the race and in Brazil as well: try to do the best two races we can and have fun driving here.”
The world champion, who was wearing a chequered wristband as his own personal good luck charm, refused to discuss rumours that his old boss, Flavio Briatore at Renault, has made him an offer to rejoin the team that twice made him king of the world. “It’s not the time to speak about next year. I try to win these two races, and when the championship finishes we will see.
“For sure I have some difficult moments and frustrating moments this season but it’s a competitive sport and you always have good and not so good moments. This year I suffered more difficult moments than I expected but nothing bigger than what is normal in the sport.”
And does he believe in miracles, having said recently that he thinks he needs one in order to win?
“I believe in miracles, for sure. I think anything can happen, this is Formula One. If you think the racing is boring or the sport is boring because always the same cars are winning the races and there is nothing to expect from the weekend, F1 is unpredictable sometimes and we have seen it many times, especially in wet races. If you said now that maybe it is raining again on Sunday, then anything can happen. Until mathematically you have no chance in the championship, you don’t give up.”
David Tremayne
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